A trial uncovers painful past

Former military rulers in Argentina accused of stealing enemies' babies

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO New York Times

Published 12:00 am, Sunday, October 9, 2011

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Victoria Montenegro recalls a childhood filled with chilling dinnertime discussions. Lt. Col. Hernan Tetzlaff, the head of the family, would recount military operations he had taken part in where "subversives" had been tortured or killed. The discussions often ended with him "slamming his gun on the table."

It took an incessant search by a human rights group, a DNA match and almost a decade of overcoming denial for Montenegro, 35, to realize that Tetzlaff was, in fact, not her father -- nor the hero he portrayed himself to be.

Instead, he was the man responsible for murdering her real parents and illegally appropriating her as his own child, she said.

He confessed to her what he had done in 2000, Montenegro said. But it was not until she testified at a trial here this spring that she finally came to grips with her past, shedding once and for all the name that Tetzlaff and his wife had given her -- Maria Sol -- after falsifying her birth records.

The trial, which is in the final phase of testimony, could prove for the first time that the nation's military leaders engaged in a systematic plan to steal babies from perceived enemies of the government.

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Jorge Rafael Videla, who headed the military during Argentina's dictatorship, stands accused of leading the effort to take babies from mothers in clandestine detention centers and give them to military or security officials, or even to third parties, on the condition that the new parents hide the true identities.

Just as wrenching, the trial is further revealing the complicit role played by civilians, including judges and members of Argentina's Roman Catholic Church.

Priests and bishops in Argentina justified their support of the government based on national security concerns, and they defended the taking of children as a way to ensure they were not "contaminated" by leftist enemies of the military, said Adolfo Perez Esquivel, a Nobel Prize-winning human rights advocate.

The abduction of an estimated 500 babies was one of the most traumatic chapters of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The frantic effort by mothers and grandmothers to locate their missing children has never let up. It was the one issue that civilian presidents elected after 1983 did not excuse the military for, even as amnesty was granted for other "dirty war" crimes.

A court convicted Tetzlaff in 2001 of illegally appropriating Montenegro. He went to prison, and Montenegro, still believing his actions during the dictatorship had been justified, visited him weekly and took him food. She saw him regularly until his death in 2003.

It fell to Montenegro to tell her three sons that Tetzlaff was not the man they thought he was, despite what he had said.

"He told them that their grandfather was a brave soldier, and I had to tell them that their grandfather was a murderer," she said.

She turned a corner on April 25 when she testified at the trial. For the first time, she used her original name, Victoria. "It was very liberating," she said.